5 Minutes Around the Blogosphere – Week 58

Today is the last day to enter your favorite photo in the Post-Halloween Costume Contest at An Island Life. A random winner will receive $50 via Paypal.

HAPPYFAMILY Brands and HarperCollins Publishers are looking for an adorable baby to feature on the cover of Dr. Robert W. Sears’ forthcoming book Happy Baby: The Organic Guide to Baby’s First 24 Months.Parents can enter a photo of their baby at www.happybabyfood.com or www.harpercollins.com. The 4 Grand Prize winners will be notified on January 30th, 2009.

CONTESTS & SWEEPSTAKES

Stonyfield Farm wants videos of your hungry babies enjoying Stonyfield Farm’s YoBaby Yogurt! And they’ll offer a little something special in return. YoBaby is made with the whole milk pediatricians recommend for healthy brain development, so you need to start saving for college! The parent who submits the prize winning video in our Who Loves YoBaby? Video Contest will receive a $2000 U.S. Savings Bond for the winning baby. Upload your videos now, share them with friends and family, and complete the online entry form for your chance to win! Some restrictions apply – visit http://yobabyyogurt.com/promotions/video_landing.cfm for official contest rules and upload your video today!

A peanut butter sandwich could help an aspiring child chef pay for college. The makers of Jif peanut butter will be accepting entries for the 7th Annual Jif Most Creative Peanut Butter Sandwich Contestfrom August 4 through November 14, 2008. Encouraging kids to invent new creative peanut butter sandwich recipes is a great way for parents to foster creativity in their children. At the same time, kids and parents are spending quality time together and having fun in the kitchen.

Art Smith, author and celebrity chef to the likes of Oprah, knows the challenges parents face in encouraging their children to eat their vegetables, and that’s why he is looking for a few good moms – those devoted to getting their kids and their communities to love their veggies. To find them, Art has teamed with the makers of Hidden Valley ranch dressing to launch the Search for Veggie Champions Contest, which begins today and closes on Jan. 15, 2009. Stop by for more information.

Project Good Gift (www.generationcures.org/goodgift) lets kids be heroes by “giving it up” for other kids. With Project Good Gift, kids choose to give up receiving a holiday gift — like a game or a toy — and ask family and friends to make a donation to Generation Cures in place of their present. The really exciting thing about Project Good Gift is that it is not the typical holiday giving campaign designed for adults. Project Good Gift puts kids in the driver’s seat. They get to make the decision to give, and take lead to encourage the adults around them to make a difference in the lives of other kids. In the process, they learn that giving can be just as great as receiving. 100% of funds raised will be used to advance the life-saving research efforts of doctors and scientists at Children’s Hospital Boston.

Remind Santa is a site which benefits the Toys for Tots program. The idea is simple: Any adult can log into the site and choose from a beautiful piece of holiday stationery and write a letter “from Santa” to their favorite child or children. They and the USPS do the rest, including printing, hand-addressing and hand-signing (no machine-press fonts here) and then ship them from the North Pole, Alaska, post office. The result: The child receives this beautiful letter, postmarked the North Pole, from Santa Claus, referring to the great things the child has done that year, etc. They keep the cost as low as possible ($6.99 per letter), which includes $1.00 each to Toys for Tots, postage, shipping, stationery and a team of folks hand-addressing and signing the letters.

Looks like Weight Watchers are developing some very exciting online tools that all you health conscious people out there can check out. First, they’ve launched a fan page on Facebook to showcase upcoming products and deliver news and information to Weight Watchers food enthusiasts. It will feature links to recipes, product-related vidcasts, instant polls and more. Second, they’ve also debuted an interactive widget tool, “I Really Want!” to help consumers hungry for a snack find a sensible alternative. The “I Really Want!” widget offers various Weight Watchers sensible food products as well as everyday snack alternatives.

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